JHNRGRS

Portraits of randomly encountered Icelanders, taken on a trip around the Route One "Ring Road" in Summer 2025. They were published as part of my cover story for The Reykjavík Grapevine, alongside interviews about whatever was on their mind.

An inari Shinto shrine in a quiet back alley in Ginza, Tokyo, Japan. I went because a tourist had uploaded photos at the wrong location on Google Maps. They had uploaded photos from the spectacular Fushimi Inari-Taisha in Kyoto — the famous mountainside temple with hundreds of torii gates in a row. As I circled the area on foot, between an overpass and some stores and a low-key commercial area, I realised the error, but eventually found this small, well-kept shrine. I lingered for a while with the roar of the city in the background, and saw a businessman stop and pray in that distinctive ritual way: two deep bows, two claps, a short prayer, and than a final bow. It was a spellbinding moment that awoke in me a fascination with Shinto that has persisted ever since.

From a hike up Úlfarsfell, May 2024. Pics for a travel piece in The Reykjavík Grapevine.

Portraits taken in 2019, on the way around the Icelandic Ring Road, and in the Westfjords.

More shots from the August 2019 trip around Iceland’s Route One.

A journey around Iceland in August 2019.

A roadtrip to the Snæfellsnes peninsula in West Iceland, February 2019.

“Coma pack” factory Closed down shops with sun-faded boxes for table fans and lawnmowers Flags half mast Happy people Woman sitting outside of Bónus and Effo Pet sheep 15 degrees Building something in the harbour  Um Hovsegg - mountain pass over tunnel  Hov: mysterious building & Viking grave  Gáyur (?): Ruth Smith museum Sumba: kids playing Lighthouse & Sammi: talk football, walks, tourists and sites. Mountains and bird cliffs, 470m, vertical clouds washing over, gulls as tiny dots, give up trying to capture the scale Famjen: prototype Faroe flag, snacks and waffles Hvalba grey beach, daisies and detritus Sandvík: sculpture of swimming man and ship Park of Trongisvágur, forest and benches, hung up dummies Leave the island in the mist, Litli Dímin haloed in grey clouds, Stór Dímon and back to Streymoy.

- Yellow plains and misty mountains in the south - Waves at Reynisfjara - Sunset, drenched pink turning to luminous colours and purple, burnt blue, ashen midnight gray and then black. - Snow packed mountains - Highland outback - frozen lake - Road vanishing road to Hoffellsjökull - Blissful seaside walk of Höfn as the sky begins to bruise - Tunnel feels like a gate to the real east - Two wild reindeer, lens flare nacreous sky, Hvalnes lighthouse, sea spray mist, jagged mountains, avalanche defences, black road vanishes into the shadowy fjörds - Stars vanishing behind mountains - Grey blustery morning - Long valley to Egillstadir - Yellow house buried in snow - Waterfall frozen in mid motion - Rivers buried under snow - Freezing wind pouring off the highlands - View across black and white streaked highlands - Yellow grass coming through like brushstrokes in monochrome land - Herðubreið standing proud against pink sky - Sun glistening on frozen Mývatn, huge snowy lopsided volcano crater - Slippery Góðafoss, sculpted snow daggers - Oxnadalur pass - towering spiky mountains, snow dancing over the road, trucks roaring past spraying us with slush - Yellow grass peeping through snow, well kept farms, Varmahlíð village nestled against the hillside  - Feeling absolutely perfectly lost

soaked in snow

Vesturbær, May 2017

Three visual poems for ‘The Factory’ exhibition in Djúpavík.

mixcloud.com/brainlove

The soft moon is fine Like the hazy grass And your everything hair.